


I Don't Want To Rest In Peace (I'd Rather Be The Ghost That Annoys You)

by Lilsciencequeen



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 12:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11646780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilsciencequeen/pseuds/Lilsciencequeen
Summary: The first time he had seen her, he thought that she was a hallucination, something that his drunk mind had conjured up.The second time that he had seen her, he thought that she was still a hallucination, something that his hungover mind had conjured up.When Fitz finds out that he is sharing his apartment with a ghost, he finds himself roped into helping her. Really, what else could he have done after she asked him for help?





	I Don't Want To Rest In Peace (I'd Rather Be The Ghost That Annoys You)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I know I had a multichapter fic based on this idea, but due to time constraints, I've just made it a longer one shot! Sorry for the disappointment guys but I hope you enjoy this one!
> 
> Title from Skulls by Bastille.

The first time he had seen her, he thought that she was a hallucination, something that his drunk mind had conjured up.

The second time that he had seen her, he thought that she was still a hallucination, something that his hungover mind had conjured up.

Then he never saw her after that and he had pushed any thoughts of her out of his mind, going about his daily life as though there was nothing wrong and nothing unusual about his apartment. He started to get on with his neighbours, including the women across the hall from him, a one Daisy Johnson and her girlfriend, Piper (who much like him, preferred to go by her surname since she hated her first name nearly as much as he did), and it was one day when the three of them went out for lunch, talking about their drunken adventures that the topic of the woman came up once again.

When he had mentioned her, Piper and Daisy had looked at each other, sharing a look that Fitz couldn’t decipher, a silent conversation happening between the two of them. Then they turned back to him, terrifyingly in synch. “You know she’s real,” Daisy informed him, her voice deadly seriously and her eyes wide.

Seeing his face, Piper nodded. “She’s been haunting that apartment for seven years now.”

“Who is she?” Fitz asked, feeling that he was being roped into this, despite never believing in ghosts himself. He had never seen any before, there was no proof, and to him, all those paranormal ghost hunting shows were set up. But still, there was just something about this that he couldn’t place his finger on.

Daisy’s lips curved into a wicked grin. “Jemma Simmons. World renowned biochemist. Rumour has it that she died in that apartment, falling ill after contracting some disease that there was no cure to. It took her life in hours and no one discovered her body for days, no one knowing that she was missing and her ghost, her spirt still lingers. Everyone who has tried to move in before has left after two months. You’re doing well, having stuck around for five so far. Maybe you’ll be the one to stay…”

He was staring at her, taking in every word and then the two women burst out laughing. “We’re kidding. Yeah, Jemma Simmons did die in there, but ghosts don’t exist. Those who left, left because of the pipes. You know how bad they are. There’s a reason that me and Piper share a show-Ow!” She gave a cry of pain, not being able to finish her sentence as Piper seemed to have stepped on her foot. Daisy turned to look at her girlfriend, pouting. “I’m sorry.”

Piper just shook her head, and tilted her head, allowing her lips to dance over Daisy’s. “You can make it up to me later.”

***

The story that Daisy had told him, it didn’t leave him. He had looked up Jemma that night, spending hours researching her life and her death and then her work, and he had been so intrigued by it that he had ended up ordering her collection of journals on Amazon, pushing all thoughts of this being slightly creepy out of mind, telling himself that he wasn’t becoming obsessed with a dead woman, that he was researching another scientist.

Who just happened to be dead (but then again there were hundreds of dead scientists out there, so this really was nothing out of the ordinary and he in no way had a crush on her. Not at all).

He had made his way through half of her journals when he had his next encounter with her. He woke up late on the Saturday morning, just after ten and after mindlessly scrolling through Facebook for almost an hour, he finally dragged himself out of bed and through his apartment to the kitchen. He lifted a bowl out of the cupboard, filling it with some cereal that was extremely high in sugar and e numbers before spinning around…

And letting out a loud shriek, dropping the bowl on the ground, the ceramic smashing with a loud crash and cereal and milk spread all across his floor. “What?” he managed to stutter out after a number of minutes of starting at her. Jemma Simmons. She was standing there, arms crossed against her chest and staring at him.

“Leopold Fitz. I need your help.”

He opened and closed his mouth a number of times, as though he were some fish before finally being able to speak. “You know me?”

“Of course I do. Your work on non-lethal firearms was amazing.”

“But you died when I was twenty!”

“And your first research paper was out four years before that, I had plenty of time to read them before I died. In fact I was half way through your journal on the drones that you were creating when I died. It was extremely interesting, it’s just a shame that I never got to finish it.”

“Thanks…” he settled on, deciding that if he was dreaming or this was some hallucination, then he could at least still be polite, it was the decent thing to do after all. “I guess.”

“But I need your help,” she continued, her voice a soft lilt. “I’ve been stuck here for seven years now. Stuck in this apartment and I can’t leave. I’m tired of being here. I want to leave Fitz, and you can help me do that.”

“How?” he asked, curious about this because if this woman, this ghost really was here, then it helped to prove so much; that there was something after death, that there were other dimensions and it wasn’t just a theory.

“You’re an engineer, you… If anyone can do it, if anyone can help me, it’s you Fitz. Please, you have to help me.”

Against his better judgement, and all common sense, he nodded. “Yeah, I’ll help you.”

***

It was weird, working with the ghost who lived in his apartment, helping her to leave this world, this plane of existence to find the peace that she so deserved after being stuck here for so long. He worked around his work schedule at Stark Industries. She couldn’t touch anything in the world, handle any physical object so it was up to him to write down any ideas that she had, to use her knowledge of the void that she lived in, combined with his own scientific expertise, to help her find a way to leave the hell that she was trapped in.

And the two of them worked extremely well together, bouncing ideas of each other and they soon settled into a flow since the weeks she had made the initial request. He also found as time progressed that he was developing feelings for her, that he found her magnificent and simply amazing but he tried to push them down. She was dead. She was dead and trying to leave this world. And she probably didn't have feelings for him also. Trust him to fall in love with the dead woman in his apartment.

But his social life was slacking as a result, he was no longer going out with friends for nights out or meals, something that Jemma was always chastising him for, telling him that he shouldn’t be neglecting his friends for her. He knew they would be worrying about him, wondering why he was locking himself away all day in his apartment, looking through journals on alternate dimensions, and planes of existence just outside their own.

But he was determined to help Jemma, she deserved to be at peace after all she had suffered. And in the weeks they worked together, a strange sort of friendship had formed between the two of them. They were in fact working together one Friday evening when a knock on the door jolted both of them out of their thoughts.

“You should answer that,” Jemma told him. “You’ve not been talking to your friends for weeks. I’m sorry,” she apologised, shaking her head as the knock on the door came again.

He looked at her, then at the door and she nodded, the edges of her lips curving up into a soft smile. He pushed himself back from the desk and padded across the room and opened it. Hunter was standing there, a smile on his face as if he were excited about something. “Have you heard?”

Fitz frowned, shaking his head. “No, is everyone okay?”

“Piper just proposed to Daisy, we’re thinking of going out for celebratory drinks. You up for it?”

Fitz slowly nodded, without even thinking about it, knowing that it would be a good idea to get out for a while, maybe it would help clear his mind so that he could come back to their issue with a clear mind. And it would also make Jemma happy. “Sure.”

Hunter’s smile seemed to grow larger at this one simple word. “Great, we’re thinking of meeting in the lobby in twenty minutes.”

Fitz nodded. “Great, let me just have a quick shower and I’ll meet you down there soon.”

“I’ll see you down there.” And with that his, friend was gone, heading back down the corridor and back to his apartment. Fitz closed the door, and spun back to face his apartment, only to find Jemma gone. She had a habit of doing this sometimes, reappearing and disappearing. Sometimes it was her doing it because she wanted alone time in whatever dimension that she was also stuck in. Sometimes she did it without meaning to, flitting between the two places. “Jemma?” he called out, not able to see her in the room. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she replied, appearing on the other side of the room from where she had been. “Are you going out tonight?”

He nodded, reaching up and rubbing at the back of his neck. “Daisy and Piper just got engaged, a couple of us are going out for drinks.”

A smile crossed her face, one that seemed soft and full of love. “That sounds like fun. Make sure you have a nice time tonight.”

“Yeah, I will. Sorry, about not helping you tonight.”

“It’s fine,” she reassured him and he could tell by the tone of her voice that she really did mean it. “We all need a break sometimes, come back to work with a clear head and we’re nearly there anyway, you said so yourself.”

“Will you be okay here, by yourself?”

She nodded. “I’ll be fine Fitz, you don’t need to worry about me.”

It only took Fitz fifteen minutes to get ready and meet up with his friends and Jemma tried not to feel sad that he was away, that he was going out with friends while she was still stuck here. She had tried for so long now to keep her feelings for him hidden. Because over those weeks, she had developed feelings for him. She had fallen for him and she hated that she had. He probably didn't have feelings for her.

And she was a ghost. She had been dead for seven years now and trapped here on Earth, the place that had become Hell to her. It seemed that the Universe, the cosmos was against her, the galaxy playing another cruel trick on her and she hated it. She wanted to scream and shout and damn everything and everyone.

The whole world started to spin in front of her like it did before she died, the same nauseating feeling overwhelming her, the buzzing in her skull hurting her ears and in the end, she did scream, she did shout and she did damn everything and everyone. She blamed the cosmos for what life had given her and she reached over and swiped her hands across the island in the apartment, as if to swipe everything off the table.

She expected nothing to happen. She was a ghost, a whisper of a person so nothing should have happened.

But something did happen; the mug that was sitting on it went flying off the island and shattered on the ground, shards of ceramic bouncing on the ground and flying everywhere. It knocked her out of her thoughts of self-loathing and anger and walked over to them, bending down.

That shouldn’t have happened. In all her seven years of being stuck here, that had never happened, she had never been able to touch a physical object. She poked at the shards and they shifted on the ground, and she tilted her head, frowning and lifted on up, dropping it and allowing it to fall in the palm of her hand.

And it did, the shard sitting there, not falling through her. She was holding it, holding a physical object.

She. Was. Holding. A. Physical. Object.

And this here, this revelation, this discovery could change everything.

***

The next morning as the first shards of light started to break through his curtains, he awoke with a start as the idea came to him. A way to help Jemma. He reached for his notebook, flicking open to the first available page and scribbling down his thoughts, and after checking and rechecking his calculations, he decided that it would work.

That this would help Jemma.

Allow her to finally be at peace.

Climbing out of bed, he found the first pair of jeans that he could and struggled into them, pulling them on and buckling the belt before grabbing a hoodie and sliding it on and pushed his way out of the bedroom. “Jemma!” he called out, wondering where she was. “I think I’ve found the way to help you.”

She appeared moments later in front of him, a look of confusion on her face. If he found it unusual, he never said anything and just hurried about his business, grabbing what he needed. “I need to run to the lab, grab some equipment but then we can try the first prototype of…”

“Fitz.” Her voice calling his name cut through his sentence but he didn’t pick up on her tone of voice, at just how nervous she seemed to be.

“It might not work the first time, but we can take it from there, figure something out…”

“Fitz!” she tried again, more desperate this time. He had to hear her, had to listen to her and understand what she was trying to say.

“It’s okay,” he told her, reassuring her. “It’s okay to be nervous, and if it doesn’t work the first time then we can just try again. And it won’t take me long to run to the lab…”

She tried not to groan in frustration as he smiled at her and turned around to leave, taking a few footsteps before leaving. At this point, she knew what she had to do. She reached out and took her wrist in his hand, her fingers wrapping around it.

He stopped dead in his tracks and looked down at her hand there, something that should not have been possible.

“Fitz.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for checking out, I hope you enjoyed this!


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